The Daily Life Of Mei Furen Doting On Her Husband - Chapter 118

Afu turned her head and saw a swarm of huge bees stinging the heads of those pursuing her. She had no idea where they had come from.

With servants still rushing over from behind, Afu heard her master’s voice again, “Jump into the lake.”

Afu quickly got up and, before the second group of servants could catch up with her, she plunged into the lake without hesitation.

Once in the water, Afu remembered she couldn’t swim. She struggled and then saw something black swimming towards her. She was frightened until she realized it was a large turtle.

The turtle swam under Afu and lifted her up. She grabbed onto the turtle in fear and swam to the other side of the lake.

Just when Afu felt she was about to suffocate, the turtle lifted her out of the water. She gasped for air, lay on the turtle’s back, and breathed in the fresh air. She saw a bright moon peeking through the clouds, a large area of reeds covered with a layer of frost in the moonlight, and a man in white standing before her, extending a hand.

Afu stared blankly at the hand, which was as white as jade with a hazy glow under the moonlight. The shape of the knuckles was beautiful. It was a very beautiful hand.

The owner of that hand was a remarkably handsome man. Although he was a man, Afu thought he resembled a fairy from the moon, even more beautiful than her stepmother and three sisters.

The fairy smiled slightly, plucked a piece of water grass from her head with his hand, and said, “Are you still not getting up?”

Afu suddenly came to her senses. That voice was her master’s! She immediately grabbed the reeds at the man’s feet and climbed up the shore. The place was far from where she had jumped into the water. It was dark, so she couldn’t see what was happening over there, but she could still vaguely hear the noisy commotion.

“Master, they want to beat me, let’s run!” After her previous silence in front of Mr. Tao and the others, Afu now chattered, “They are very bad, and there are still many of them. We have to run! If we are caught, we will be locked up!”

Seeing her dripping with water like a drowned rat, Pei Jiya used a finger to touch her hair, which looked like waterweed, and said leisurely, “Run? If they want to hit you, you should fight back whether they hit you or not.”

This was the first time Afu had heard such a statement. She thought about it and felt that what her master said probably made sense. “But I can’t beat them.”

Pei Jiya smiled kindly in the moonlight, “Since you call me Master, of course I will teach you what to do.”

“Come, let’s go catch some mice first.”

Ah Fu was at a loss. “Catch mice?”

Pei Jiya waved his sleeves to push aside the reeds, his tone a bit nonchalant but also slightly expectant, “Yes, you have a father, a stepmother, and three half-sisters, right? Then let’s catch five mice.”

“Master will teach you how to make things, and then take you to play a game of turning a living person into a mouse. It will be very interesting.” He smiled softly and tapped Afu’s wet forehead. “However, if you can’t learn and can’t make what I want, I can only turn you into a little mouse.”

Although the tone was joking, Pei Jiya was not. Afu couldn’t tell whether he was joking or not. She struggled to lift her wet skirt and followed Pei Jiya, stepping back to their shabby little courtyard.

“What I’m going to teach you to make is something called ‘rat lichen.’”

Pei Jiya had been in poor health when he was young, and the Pei family had hired countless people for him, including various mysterious alchemists. Among them was a crazy old woman who could do all sorts of strange things. Pei Jiya was smart, but he had no interest in the conventional things people usually learned. Instead, he was fascinated by these strange skills. Within two years, he had mastered everything the old woman knew.

Not only that, but he also searched for similar unique skills everywhere, scouring various texts and trying to explore new unique skills on his own. His talent in that area was considered rare, and the old woman even said he was born to learn such unique skills.

But Pei Jiya soon discovered that the little mouse Afu, whom he had picked up casually, was as talented as he was, if not more so.

He taught her how to make rat lichen. Except for her first failure, she succeeded on the second try. She made four rat lichens out of five mice, while he had failed several times before he succeeded.

Pei Jiya’s eyes, as he looked at Afu, began to take on a strange gleam.

However, Afu was too absorbed in the things she had made to notice this.

Pei Jiya suddenly lifted Afu’s chin and looked at her unremarkable face carefully. He finally smiled at her with satisfaction. “You are very good, very good. From now on, you are my beloved apprentice, and I will teach you everything I know.”

Pei Jiya began to look forward to what she would become in the future.

Three days later, Wu Zhen still couldn’t find any trace of her cousin Pei. He seemed to have vanished from the face of the earth. There was no sign left under the cliff or on the nearby official road. After all, it had been a while since the accident, and many clues had disappeared. Wu Zhen couldn’t find any leads, and all her tracing methods proved useless. The situation had reached a bit of a stalemate.

However, Wu Zhen did not display much nervousness about this. After all, good people did not live long, evil people lived a thousand years, and it was not easy for Cousin Pei to die early. Before leaving, the small gift she had given Cousin Pei could turn him into a mouse, and that state would last for at least a few months. So, he might be hiding in a mouse nest.

Wu Zhen knew his ability to hide. If he didn’t show himself voluntarily, Wu Zhen estimated she wouldn’t easily find him.

In contrast, Mei Zhuyu was more anxious. Wu Zhen noticed this and pondered it for two days. That night, while they were sleeping, Wu Zhen confronted him directly.

“My dear, are you hiding something from me?” Wu Zhen asked point-blank.

Mei Zhuyu looked at her, his mouth feeling bitter as he didn’t want to speak—he had just taken the pregnancy-preserving medicine before bed.

He remained silent.

Wu Zhen knew that when he didn’t want to talk, he would be tight-lipped, and no amount of teasing would extract a single word from him. If their bodies hadn’t been swapped, she might have tried using her beauty to lure him into talking. But using her husband’s body to seduce him? Forget it.

“Oh, you really can’t tell me?” Wu Zhen asked, unwilling to give up.

Mei Zhuyu spoke but still did not answer her question directly. He simply said, “We need to leave here as soon as possible.”

Wu Zhen, not easily deterred, continued her probing. Curiosity was her nature, and she liked to get to the bottom of things. Since Mei Zhuyu remained tight-lipped, she tried another angle, “Last time we were by the stream under the cliff, did you sense anything?”

“Do you know what that is?”